At the age of 16, Erfan fled Afghanistan for Switzerland, leaving his parents behind. He was caught at the Turkish border and sent to prison for five months. That is where a friend gave him this notebook. Erfan himself is turning the pages.

DEER CROSSING2013 (C-Prints in different sizes with wooden frames)

The photographs of "DEER CROSSING" were taken by camera traps set up by hunters or biologists. I collected these pictures on the internet. In this series, I raise questions as to the image’s status in photography. Who holds the image’s copyright? Shouldn’t the photographs belong to everybody, since each and every photographer "steals" a moment from our common world? With these pictures, I carry this reasoning one step further, for in the case of these snapshots there is no photographer who presses the shutter button at the right moment. Who actually shoots the picture, the hunter or the biologist who sets up the trap? The camera trap itself? Pure chance or even the subject?

KRISZINA2013 (Text, C-Prints and Video)

This is Krisztina's story. Krisztina loves miracles and she believes in fate. It is a story of many dreams. Most of them are unfulfilled, but hover around her all the time like atoms. Krisztina's everyday life, though, is remote from those dreams. These rough experiences have been set into her face. When I choose to talk about Krisztina, I speak of a life full of contrasts and contradictions. About Moet, Dior perfume, Rolex watches and 10 different sexual partners per day. About a life full of adjustment and transfiguration. Power and dependency, restlessness and unrest. Krisztina commutes between worlds. The world of being a mother in her home country and the world of being a sex worker in Bern.
(...) Text: Linda Elsner

DIFFERENT BODYBUILDERS WITH DIFFERENT NEWSPAPERS IN FRONT OF DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS2012 (C-Prints, Framed, 50x70cm)

The pictures of the series "BODYBUILDER WITH DIFFERENT NEWSPAPERS IN FRONT OF DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS" come from the largest bodybuilder webpage on the internet. What we see are people presenting themselves half-naked with a newspaper. The newspapers are supposed to prove, oddly enough, what their physical appearance looked like on the date in question. More often than not, these people are cloaked in an aura of sadness, the dissatisfaction with their body is written all over their face. Nevertheless, they post these private pictures on the internet, thus showing them to thousands of people who may write comments in return. By going public, they want to motivate themselves to lose weight or to build up muscle.

PEOPLE TAPPING ON DIFFERENT ITEMS2012 (Video Installation 5:31:00 hours)

I selected 150 youtube videos for this video installation. For the most part, they show hands of women tapping on various objects and surfaces with their nails. This phenomenon called ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) has not been confirmed by science. The ASMR effect is a tingling sensation in the head, triggered by certain sounds, that puts people into a state of relaxation or even trance.
The installation consists of three iPads that are connected to loudspeakers and a mixer. These videos, playing simultaneously, create a drumming sound space. "PEOPLE TAPPING ON DIFFERENT ITEMS" deals with issues of consumerism and intimacy in a post-internet age.

ALL YOU CAN EAT2011 (Image Projection, 7:42 min)

"ALL YOU CAN EAT" is a series of pictures I stumbled upon when surfing the internet. They show amateur footage of fanatic gun owners who want to show off their weapons. To prove the authenticity of their weapons, they portray them alongside their meals - very much in the tradition of still lifes. In an attempt to reduce the social value placed on these weapons, I arrange the pictures like a menu to draw attention to the food rather than the weapons. In this way, I make a critical statement on the availability of weapons and their relationship to modern conservative concepts of masculinity.